London’s National Portrait Gallery celebrates a record 2 million visitors

The National Por­trait Gal­lery yes­ter­day wel­comed its two mil­lionth vis­it­ors – a mile­stone which sets up the highest annual fig­ures in the Gallery’s his­tory when they are pub­lished at the end of the month.

The group of vis­it­ors through the door when the fig­ure of two mil­lion was reached was given a sur­prise wel­come by the Gallery’s dir­ector Mr Sandy Nairne. The Cara fam­ily from Northamp­ton – Melanie, 45, Dave , 44, both doc­tors, and Josh, 14 – were presen­ted with a year’s Mem­ber­ship to the Gal­lery, a £100 voucher for the Por­trait Res­taur­ant and cop­ies of the Gal­lery Guide and High­lights book.

Dave Cara said:

This is won­der­ful. I’m a reg­u­lar vis­itor to the National Por­trait Gal­lery and most of my know­ledge of the his­tory of Brit­ish mon­archs was learnt from my vis­its here over the years.’

The Caras were the two mil­lionth vis­it­ors recor­ded since the 2011-12 fin­an­cial year star­ted last April. Last year’s fig­ure was 1,819,442 while the Gallery’s pre­vi­ous highest ever fig­ure in 2009-10 was 1,961,843 visits.

100,000 people have already vis­ited the hugely pop­u­lar Lucian Freud Por­traits, and last year’s BP Por­trait Award 2011 exhib­i­tion — free entry made pos­sible by BP’s spon­sor­ship — received the largest num­ber of vis­it­ors for any National Por­trait Gal­lery exhib­i­tion (341,050).

Sandy Nairne, Dir­ector of the National Por­trait Gal­lery, Lon­don, says:

The grow­ing pop­ular­ity of the National Por­trait Gal­lery is made pos­sible by hav­ing cre­at­ive and hard-working staff, ded­ic­ated volun­teers and great trust­ees, sup­por­ted through an enter­pris­ing com­bin­a­tion of pub­lic and private sec­tor funding.’

Reflec­tion (Self-portrait), 1985, Private Col­lec­tion, Ire­land © The Lucian Freud Archive. Photo: Cour­tesy Lucian Freud Archive

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